But with the U.S. economy cruising along this past year at high speed, the slowdown did not come along until mid-January, said Joe Gonzales, dispatcher and operations manager for Gonzales Moving and Storage.

The company is the local agent for Mayflower Transit, which contacted Joe's father, Pete in 1989 to succeed Dalby Transfer and Storage as the local agency.

Pete Gonzales, who has driven now for Mayflower for 34 years, agreed. But that didn't tie him down to the office work.

"He comes in for a while,'' says Joe Gonzales. "But then he gets the...'' and nods to a tapping right foot as if he were stepping on an accelator, adding that Pete is in touch with the office three or four times a day when he's driving.

So while Pete hits the road, his business is in the hands of his family.

Along with Joe Gonzales is Pete's sister, Guadalupe Dorado, who came to the moving business after working first for Diamond Shamrock in Amarillo. After a merger and move of much of Diamond Shamrock's operations to Dallas and San Antonio, she left Diamond Shamrock.

She resisted Pete's invitation to join Gonzales Moving and Storage then. Instead, she managed a collection agency branch office in Corpus Christi. When it closed, though, she decided rather than joining the collection company in San Antonio, that she would return to the High Plains five years ago.

Dorado learned the moving business doing office tasks and is now the office manager, coralling the paperwork that comes with every move.

While Pete heads the driving operations, he is joined by Dorado's husband Antonio and a nephew, Paul Gonzales, who drives locally, among the seven drivers, seven employees locally and the six to eight part-timers who keep the company on the move.

While packing, lifting and loading the thousands of pounds of furniture and belongings into a truck and driving them across country hasn't changed through the years, the paperwork has. Computers and their accompanying technologies, as in every other industry, has speeded the paperwork.

Computers are on-board to take advantage of Mayflower's tracking system, said Gonzales. The system allows him to locate drivers on an office work station, and shows cell phone numbers and a host of other information. Driver locations are listed to the number of miles from the nearest city, such as his father's truck near Orlando, Fla.

If the driver is out of range of a cellular telephone relay tower, the computer system can transmit messages by satellite, he said.

If pagers seemed like high technology in communications in recent years, that has passed, he said.

"Paging is obsolete,'' Gonzales said.

The tracking system is installed on trucks used for interstate moves, and will be installed on trucks for intrastate moves, he said.

For Dorado, computers mean less actual paper to shuffle through while doing more of the actual paperwork for a move. And with connections to Mayflower's state and corporate headquarters, high-speed communications allows for payments to be credited to Gonzales Moving and Storage in a single day rather than in the 30 to 60 days that had been common before, she said.

Moves within the immediate Amarillo area make up about 40 percent of Gonzales Moving and Storage's business, Joe Gonzales said, while interstate and moves within Texas split the rest.

A local move takes about six to eight hours for a typical three-bedroom house for a three-man crew.

A move within state is coordinated with Mayflower of Texas, and requires more detailed paperwork, including a bill of laden, insurance records, a piece count and packing certificate, and interstate moves coordinated through Mayflower Transit's St. Louis headquarters require their own sets of paperwork.

The use of computers and the tracking system figures into Gonzales Moving and Storage's business strategy in dealing with customers, as well. They can connect with the Web site of Mayflower's parent company, UniGroup Inc., and by entering their order number and name can also track where their belongings are in a move, Gonzales said.

The company's emphasis is on service and on-time delivery, Dorado said. That eases the worries of customers.

Such care is translating into industry awards. Pete Gonzales is a finalist this year for Mayflower's driver of the year award, which will be announced in February. He was driver of the month in June and will be recognized also for 25 years of safe driving.

Additionally, Mayflower has given Gonzales Moving and Storage its Circle of Excellence award for the past seven years and named the agency one of its top three performers nationwide in 1999.

Taking care of customers is also showing up in the revenue picture. When Joe started in 1989 as a driver, annual revenues were about $250,000 a year, he said. Now, with the heavy flow of interstate and intrastate moves, revenues surpass $1 million a year.

Through it all, Dorado said she develops close relations with customers, especially those who come back when its time for another move. One woman stayed in touch on a near daily basis until her move was complete.

"I told her, 'I feel like I need to be sending you Christmas cards,' '' she said.

That all adds up to growth for the company. Since opening 11 years ago, it has been housed in the same 5,800 square foot facility at 7301 Dumas Drive that has become quite cramped. Gonzales Moving and Storage uses a building at 601 S. Travis for auxiliary storage, but is considering building new quarters.

Because Amarillo commercial real estate has gotten more expensive in the booming economy, Gonzales said the addition of a 16,000-17,000 warehouse will likely be at its present site, either this summer or next summer.